About

This blog is about Game design…

I’m James. I’ve always loved boardgames: playing them, analysing them and most of all, designing them. Now, I’m trying to publish my own games, with a particular focus on a property-themed game I’ve been developing for a little while.

Of course, one way to improve your own design abilities is to study other people’s games: specifically why they work or don’t work. So here on this site, I’m sharing my analysis – in the hopes it might be useful to someone else too.

I am most interested in:

Games which have proved to be popular hits: say what you like, there’s something they’ve done well and we should take an interest in it why

Games which do what they are trying to do very well: there’s room in life for many, many different types of game but that doesn’t mean they all achieve what they set out to do

The value of experiments on existing games to unearth principles and common patterns that can be re-used in new designs

The primacy of subjective game experience over mechanics that are clever in themselves